Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours

By Dick Oliver

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Put Your HTML Page Online Today
  • I. Your First Web Page
  • Hour 1. Understanding HTML and XML
  • Hour 2. Create a Web Page Right Now
  • Hour 3. Linking to Other Web Pages
  • Hour 4. Publishing Your HTML Pages
  • II. Web Page Text
  • Hour 5. Text Alignment and Lists
  • Hour 6. Text Formatting and Font Control
  • Hour 7. Email Links and Links Within a Page
  • Hour 8. Creating HTML Forms
  • III. Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 9. Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 10. Putting Graphics on a Web Page
  • Hour 11. Custom Backgrounds and Colors
  • Hour 12. Creating Animated Graphics
  • IV. Web Page Design
  • Hour 13. Page Design and Layout
  • Hour 14. Graphical Links and Imagemaps
  • Hour 15. Advanced Layout with Tables
  • Hour 16. Using Style Sheets
  • V. Dynamic Web Pages
  • Hour 17. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages
  • Hour 18. Interactive Pages with Applets and ActiveX
  • Hour 19. Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers
  • Hour 20. Setting Pages in Motion with Dynamic HTML
  • VI. Building a Web Site
  • Hour 21. Multipage Layout with Frames
  • Hour 22. Organizing and Managing a Web Site
    • When One Page Is Enough
    • Organizing a Simple Site
    • Organizing a Larger Site
    • Including Comments in a Page
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 23. Helping People Find Your Web Pages
  • Hour 24. Planning for the Future of HTML
  • VII. Appendixes
  • A. Readers' Most Frequently Asked Questions
  • B. HTML Learning Resources on the Internet
  • C. Complete HTML 4 Quick Reference
  • D. HTML Character Entities

When One Page Is Enough

Building and organizing an attractive and effective Web site doesn't always need to be a complex task. In some cases, you can effectively present a great deal of useful information on a single page, without a lot of flashy graphics. In fact, there are several advantages to a single-page site:

• All the information on the site downloads as quickly as possible.
• The whole site can be printed out on paper with a single print command, even if it is several paper pages long.
• Visitors can easily save the site on their hard drive for future reference, especially if it uses a minimum of graphics.
• Links between different parts of the same page usually respond more quickly than links to other pages.

Figure 22.1 shows the first part of a Web page that serves its intended audience better as a single lengthy page than it would as a multi-page site. It contains about eight paper pages worth of text explaining how to participate in a popular email discussion list.

Figure 22.1 A good table of contents can make a lengthy page easy to navigate.

The page begins, as most introductory pages should, with a succinct explanation of what the page is about and who would want to read it. A detailed table of contents allows readers to skip directly to the reference material in which they are most interested. (Refer to Hour 7, "Email Links and Links Within a Page," for a refresher on how to build a table of contents.)

As Figure 22.2 shows, each short section of the page is followed by a link back up to the table of contents, so navigating around the page feels much the same as navigating around a multi-page site. Since the contents of the page are intended as a handy reference, its readers will definitely prefer the convenience of being able to bookmark or save a single page instead of 8 or 10 separate pages.

Figure 22.2 Always provide a link to the table of contents after each section of a long Web page.

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